The nephew of slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk told a large San Diego crowd gathered to honor the gay icon yesterday that Milk is still central to their struggle.

“His voice was dimmed 30 years ago, but it was not silenced,” Stuart Milk said at the first Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast, held on the day Milk would have turned 79.

Stuart Milk said he still gets e-mails from people all over the world – from Turkey and Argentina, Ireland and Singapore – expressing hope for gay equality.

About 1,000 people packed a large ballroom at a downtown Holiday Inn. It was a smiling set of gay politicians, equal-rights activists, labor allies and others. Youths with mohawks mingled with white-haired people in pressed suits.

“We all stand on Harvey Milk's shoulders,” state Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, said as she beckoned a dozen current and former openly gay local elected officials like herself to the stage.

The group introduced another speaker, José Julio Sarria, whose unsuccessful run for San Francisco supervisor in 1961 made him the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States.

Sarria said he ran to show people that gays are not second-class citizens.

“It was very difficult,” he said. “It is still very difficult to make people believe that. We must all know and be proud of what we are.”

Megan Hogan, 18, earned perhaps the loudest and longest applause when she accepted a youth essay contest award from San Diego LGBT Pride about her struggle to start a diversity club at the Winston School in Del Mar.

“I know that there is hope and that things are changing,” Hogan, a lesbian, said in her video essay, which was played for everyone.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and his lesbian daughter, Lisa, were emcees.

Many in the crowd wore buttons bearing Milk's face. One of them was Albert Velasquez, 32, of Otay Mesa, who said he was part of a coalition of civil-rights backers. He said he hopes Milk gets a day statewide.

“Harvey Milk is on par with such great leaders as Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez,” he said.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation to designate May 22 as Harvey Milk Day in California and encourage schools to commemorate the day. Schwarzenegger said then that Milk's contributions should be recognized at a local level “by those who were most impacted by his contributions.”

The Rev. Chris Clark, pastor of East Clairemont Southern Baptist Church, opposes any statewide designation of a Harvey Milk Day. He said it puts “sexual orientation and sexuality in front of elementary school kids.

“Foisting it onto hearts and minds of kids as young as kindergartners, I don't see the validity or the merit in that,” he said.

A similar bill cleared the state Senate last week and is headed to the Assembly even as California awaits a state Supreme Court ruling on the legality of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Word that the ruling will be released Tuesday came about an hour after the breakfast broke up.